The Austin Downtown Density Bonus Program: how downtown exceeds 8:1

Bonus area is measured two ways, and you get the larger

Everything in the program turns on one definition. Bonus area is the greater of:

• the gross floor area exceeding the maximum floor-to-area ratio your primary entitlement allows; or
• the gross floor area inside the portion of the building exceeding the maximum height your primary entitlement allows.

Two different measures of "extra", and the program charges you for whichever is bigger. A tall, slim tower and a squat, dense one can exceed their entitlement in different ways and end up owing different amounts of bonus area for the same square footage.

Primary entitlement is what the site's current zoning gives it — for CBD that is 350 feet at 8:1, for DMU 120 feet at 5:1 — and it expressly includes any previous modification to the base zoning, not just the base itself.

Four gatekeeper requirements come before any bonus at all

These are not ways to earn bonus area. They are the price of admission — a project that fails them gets nothing, however much community benefit it offers:

1. Urban Design Guidelines. The director must determine the project substantially complies. The applicant submits a schematic site plan, building elevations and whatever else fully describes the project's urban design character and its relationship to its surroundings. The Design Commission evaluates and makes recommendations, which the director must consider.
2. Great Streets streetscape. A restrictive covenant committing to streetscape improvements along all public street frontages.
3. Or, on a TxDOT frontage, a fee-in-lieu plus a one-time maintenance obligation fee — both set by separate ordinance. The Transportation and Public Works director may spend those fees on Great Streets capital projects downtown.
4. Two-star Austin Energy Green Building rating. Another restrictive covenant, using the ratings in effect when the project registers — and a signed Letter of Intent must reach the director before any bonus area is approved.

Note how much of this is covenanted rather than merely conditioned. Two of the four gatekeepers create recorded obligations that run with the land.

Then: earn it, or buy it

Once through the gate, bonus area is obtained in one of two ways — or a mix.

Community benefits. Public amenities that go beyond the gatekeeper requirements. The section sets out twelve categories, led by affordable housing. There is a real procedural incentive here: if an applicant achieves 100 percent of the desired bonus area through community benefits, the director may approve it administratively — no council item.

Development bonus fee. A dollar amount per square foot of bonus area, paid to the City. An applicant must state up front what the total would be if they bought the entire bonus outright, and how that fee would be split across community benefits — even when they intend to provide benefits instead.

Three definitions that decide eligibility

The definitions section does real work, because several community benefits are gated on them:

• Live music use — performance at least four days a week in an indoor facility of at least 2,500 square feet, open to the general public and properly equipped with sound, staging, lighting and safety provision. An occasional performance space does not qualify.
• Family-friendly eligible bedroom — any bedroom over one within a dwelling unit that provides compliant on-site affordable housing. So the second and subsequent bedrooms count; the first never does.
• Mixed-use project — 25 percent or more of floor area in a use different from the predominant use. The same 25 percent threshold defines a non-residential project from the other direction.